The vast quantity of information available daily, be it news, entertainment, or information related to a particular public event, like a sporting event, may overwhelm the intake capacity of consumers. Out of the thousands of hours of content available, it is only possible to consume a small portion.
Existing solutions fail to solve this problem. Historically, there have been two approaches. Pre-cut summaries (e.g., the evening news, sports wrap-ups) are sometimes produced, but fail to reflect the priorities and interests of the individual consumer. Alternatively, customized news delivery is now possible, using technologies such as really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, where a user may customize the set of sources that present information to the user. An example of this is the customizable iGoogle home page, which can deliver content based on user interest, but may fail to constrain the stream to a consumable volume. Moreover, the RSS approach requires user interaction with each individual source and content segment. The user must select a source and evaluate a particular video clip, for example, before deciding to watch it.